So when the Charles Koch Foundation
helped fund a study of climate change by Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, one might well have
expected that the results would conform to their agenda. After all, Muller himself had raised
questions about the veracity of climate science, arguing that data obtained from many weather
stations around the world was so poor that the margin of error was scientifically unacceptable.

Muller also excoriated climate scientists for emails stolen by hackers from the Climatic
Research Unit at the UK-based University of East Anglia, which, skeptics and deniers were quick to
argue, revealed a conspiracy among climate scientists to manipulate data. However, a study of Muller's criticism of one such email suggests that he may well have
manipulated its contents to alter the meaning of its message.

So what did the study by
Muller and his team of scientists at the Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature project conclude? "Global warming is real," their report concluded, finding that
the earth's temperature has indeed increased by about one degree Celsius since the mid-1950s.

"We think that means that those groups had truly been very
careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that," Muller
continued. "They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other
corrections."

While acknowledging the reality of climate change, the Berkeley report
declined to conclude to what extent it is due to human activity. Nor did it factor in the effects
of global rises in ocean temperatures, although it did conclude that warming has been greatest on
land.

Do the results of the study suggest that the debate will now move from whether
climate change is real to what to do about it? Apparently not to the Koch brothers. The Charles
Koch Foundation was quick to point out that the Berkeley study "did not examine ocean temperature
data or the cause of warming on our climate, as some have claimed."